While kite-o-rama continues on the Cape, with both kite species still turning up from Mashpee to Harwich, the Vineyard scored this week with an even less likely bird with a long, bifurcated tail. Like the flamingo, this one came to light on Facebook and, tragically, was never relocated by any of the local birders. Unlike the Swallow-tailed Kite this bird doesn’t breed anywhere near the United States, so its appearance is even more remarkable. It’s a South American flycatcher that lives so far from here that it literally flies north for the winter, from breeding grounds in southern Argentina to wintering grounds in the northern Amazon. It was a Fork-tailed Flycatcher, and every birder on the island wishes the fork they had seen it.
The bird was photographed by off-island birder Robert Provost, who didn’t know what it was, so put it in the Merlin app, which correctly identified it from the grainy photos as a Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Skeptical, he then posted it to a national-level birding group on Facebook, where some knew immediately what it was. Oddly, quite a few other experienced birders badly misidentified this pretty obvious bird, saying it was a cuckoo for reasons I am not able to discern. Score one for AI.
There are two previous Fork-tailed Flycatcher records from the Vineyard, one in 1916 and another in 1961, so the island was certainly due for another. Nantucket has at least three records, one of which is from the dump, where the legendary Vern Laux got a photo of the Fork-tailed Flycatcher perched atop the cap of a flattened plastic bottle as it hawked insects. Another recent record was at an old capped landfill in Saugus, of all places. One can’t help but question the judgement of a bird that flies over 5000 miles in the wrong direction, away from the natural riches of the Amazon, only to take up residence at waste management facilities in New England. One that I identified at Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary spent a week there back in fall of 2009, drawing hopeful birders from at least as far as New Jersey.
Lastly, in a spring of seemingly innumerable kite sightings, the most important one of all came on Monday. What made it the most important? For one, because I saw it. But especially because I saw it from my own yard. While playing with the kids on Monday afternoon, my eye caught a high, gull shaped bird that wasn’t a gull. I immediately suspected Mississippi Kite, with two having been seen in Harwich the day before, and panic sprinted back for the camera, which then required a fumbling, equally panicked lens change from macro to telephoto. Incidentally, we were hosting friends on a play date with the kids, so when the non-birding adults saw my breathless dash to the house, they naturally assumed a child had suffered some grave injury.
Luckily, the children were fine and, more importantly, the kite was still there. He or she stayed a while, gliding back and forth over the neighborhood and snatching insects from the air, as they do, allowing several photos. It was a young bird, entering its first summer, with the missing wing feathers typical of young, wandering hawks in spring and early summer.
With several of my Cape birding friends having seen either Swallow-tailed, Mississippi, or even both species of kites from their own yards over the years, I‘ve been dying to get one myself. A rare bird sighting is always special, but never so special as when it's at your own house. And so I had been craning my neck skywards for years on warm June days in hopes of snagging that coveted yard kite. Now I have finally joined that elite club, which I’m calling the mile-high club…hold on, my producers are telling me that means something else, so for now the club name is still up in the air.
